Purpose of ifconfig

[Hill_1]

Hi all,
For my information, ifconfig allows us to build the virtual lan. May I know what is the physical configuration on the v-lan?
In what situation we will make use of this ifconfig?
Thanks.

[harry d brown jr]

ifconfig allows you to assign an IP|hostname to a lan card or make other lan card changes. So the term v-lan is not applicable here.

[Christopher McCray_1]

it allows you to assign an IP address/subnet mask, like said above. It can also change the card state to UP or DOWN.

[Roger Baptiste]

ifconfig command is
used for enabling a LAN card,
by assigning IP address, subnet mask to it and bringing it up. Correspondingly , it can
used to change the IP address
or disable the lan port.

It can also be used to
assign more than one IP address to a LAN card, which
is IP aliasing.

-raj

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

ifconfig=InterFaceCONFIGuration

This is to add/delete IP addresses, change the interface state etc., to the network interfaces on the systems usually identified by the device names lan0,lan1 etc.,.

-Sri

[rick jones]

it would be more accurate to state that ifconfig allows one to create "logical interfaces" this is basically assigning more than one IP address to a single physical (as far as the transport is concerned) link.

HP AutoPortAggregation (APA) software can be used to combine multiple physical NICs into one "virtual NIC"

however, neither of the above is a virtual LAN in the context of VLANS. support for VLANS is a future thing - and what we'll do for names then is anyone's guess. (I have no data for timing of vlan support, that is best left to your friendly neighborhood sales contacts...)

it is conceivable that HP APA could be used to bind multiple VLANS on separate physical NIC together into one virtual vlan on top of which the transport places several logical interfaces. simple eh?-)

[Bernie Vande Griend]

Rick is correct, perhaps you are talking about logical interfaces.

If you are, the reason you would want them is if you have a single server but need multiple IP addresses on a single network interface on the same network. A good example is for Web servers where you want mutiple web services running on the same box. If you want to run them all on port 80, you'd need multiple IPs.

TO do this with ipconfig:
ifconfig lan0:1 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 (add any other options you need)

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Hill,

Take a look at the thread below.

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90681/B2355-90681_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90681/00/01/135-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90681/00/01/135-toc.html&searchterms=ifconfig&queryid=20011024-140049

Hope this helps.

thanks